Things went from strange to worse during an Oklahoma traffic stop. After pulling over a couple for driving a stolen car with a suspended license, officers found an open bottle of Kentucky Deluxe whiskey, a rattlesnake, a firearm, and a canister of radioactive powdered uranium.
Shares of Philippine’s Cebu Air plunged 38% when a trader mistyped which stock they meant to sell.
An Uber pulled up to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Utah with a single passenger, a baby Lesser Goldfinch bird. Tim Crowley came across the bird when he was drinking with his friends and was too drunk to drive so he sent the bird in its own private car. No word on if it was a Black Car or Pool.
A man fleeing from the police was hidden out of view but then gave away his location when he farted, loudly.
Amazon decided not to charge a restocking fee and will refund a woman whose toddler bought a $400 couch while she was sleeping.
Toyota is working on a car with a solar roof for its electric cars so they can charge themselves while driving. On the other end of the spectrum, the Lexus division is building a 65-foot luxury motor yacht.
In preparation for all-electric double-decker buses, Transport for London commissioned new sounds that will alert people when these new, much quieter, buses are approaching. Bubbling noises and intermittent bleeps were voted down as “too spaceshippy” in favor of a canned recording of the old Routemaster bus which could be heard “a mile off.”
An elderly man took a cake to a local hospital as a gift for the nurses that cared for his family member. Little did he know that the cake he took was one given to his grandson by his mates and was laced with cannabis. Police reported the staff at the hospital were “off their faces” and “relaxed.”
Instagram Influencer Lori Faith had built her career on her many different hair styles and hair treatments. But she never really went viral until she live-streamed a bleach treatment and lost all her hair.
Organizers of the Straight Pride Parade (motto: “It’s great to be straight”) received unmarked letters that they suspected might be filled with something dangerous. The bomb squad was called, the letters were opened, and authorities discovered glitter and note signed “Happy Pride” in rainbow colors.
An outfit called BASE Hologram has put together a tour featuring Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison holograms touring with a live backup band.
A bit more DIY, a zoo in Japan held a drill for a polar bear escape and dressed a zoo employee in a bear suit the make the exercise more realistic. He really got into his role.
Tiffani Adams was exhausted and fell asleep as her short flight from Quebec to Toronto took off. Unfortunately, when she woke up, not only had everyone gotten off the plane, it was pitch dark and parked for the night with the doors locked.
Researchers at Cornell University have created a system of circulating liquid to “store energy and power robotic applications for sophisticated, long-duration tasks.” Basically, robot blood.
The sandwich chain Arby’s, butt of many Jon Stewart jokes, is coming out with a new meal option that looks like a carrot, tastes like a carrot, but is actually meat. The Marrot is a “turkey-based pseudo-vegetable had a sweet maple taste with earthy, herb-filled undertones.” Just call it a carrot made of meat.
On Monday, an all-star cast of actors gathered together in New York to perform a dramatic reading of the Mueller Report, the 448-page looking into Russian interference into the 2016 election. The play was written by Robert Schenkkan, a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning screenwriter and playwright. Jason Alexander, Sigourney Weaver, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mark Hamill, and many others make their appearance. John Lithgow is particularly good at channeling Donald Trump as he reads his quotes and tweets.
The performance was for one night only and was put on by Law Works, who also host the video stream above. From their about page:
Law Works partners with leaders in the legal, judicial, national security, law enforcement community, and current and former elected and appointed officials to explain how the rule of law is the foundation of a healthy democracy, to defend the nonpartisan role of the Department of Justice, and to expose current threats to core American values and electoral systems . We advocate for bi-partisan legislation to protect our judicial institutions.
Finnish national broadcaster YLE discontinued its weekly Nuntii Latini, newscast spoken entirely in Latin. Not to worry, the Catholic Church has announced the Vatican Radio will start hosting one of its own Latin broadcasts.
The 100-year old Monterey Cypress tree in San Diego that is said to have inspired Dr. Suess’ story of The Loraxfell over. No word on if the Once-Ler is to blame.
Marijuana Pepsi is now Dr. Marijuana Pepsi after earning her dissertation on “Black names in white classrooms: Teacher behaviors and student perceptions.”
Mitsubishi is selling a $270 toaster that toasts one perfect slice of bread at a time.
An oak sapling, planted jointly by Trump and Macron as a symbol of their countries’ friendship, has died. In an awkward bit of symbolism, the tree died in quarantine.
In order to speed up turnaround times for its airplanes at the gate, United is sending its ground crew to NASCAR pit crew training camps.
The F-35 fighter jet project is coming along nicely save a few hiccups. Pilots are asked to limit the jet’s airspeed to avoid “damage to the F-35’s airframe or stealth coating.” Kind of the point with a fighter jet. To go fast and not fall apart.
The Honda lawnmower that can go 150 mph announced last year? There’s now video.
The was a bumper crop of mangoes in the Philippines due to unusually warm weather, they now have 10 million more mangoes than usual and are not sure what to do.
A couple of weeks ago, I took the family to see Then They Came for Me, an exhibit about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast during the Second World War. The exhibit, at San Francisco’s Presidio, has been extended through August and I highly recommend it. The use of the courts to remove civil liberties and justify racism (let’s call it what it was) is an ugly chapter in American history. Lessons learned then are more relevant than ever in today’s political environment of bombastic pronouncements and unnecessary walls.
Most know about the forced removal of 120,000 Americans from California, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington during World War II but did you also know,
Most families were given only a few days to clear out or give away everything they owned. Lifelong businesses were shutdown and sold off for pennies on the dollar. Houses were sold off, basically repossessed. You were only allowed a single suitcase and it wasn’t clear where you were going.
Until the actual camps were built, families had to make do in the horse stalls at local racetracks. Of course it stunk, was cold, and there was no privacy.
The “Internment” camps were a nice way of putting it. They were basically concentration camps, surrounded by razor wire and machine gun towers. The shacks were simple tar-paper sheds which provided almost no insulation from the freezing temperature in the Winter and baked in the desert sun during the Summer.
There were many acts of passive resistance in the face of extreme institutional injustice. This was 20 years before the civil rights movement.
Award-winning photographers Ansel Adams and Dorthea Lange were hired by the War Department to document the round-up and show it in a favorable light. Photos that depicted machine gun towers or protests were censored. It didn’t go as planned and we have them to thank for their record of this time.
We were lucky to have a guide the day we visited. Not just any guide but Donald Tamaki, one of the lawyers who worked on the team that cleared Fred Korematsu from the landmark Korematsu v. United States case.
Our guide, Don Tamaki
In the video clip above, Don talks about how his team uncovered evidence of a cover-up. There was no evidence of any shore-to-ship radio messages, the threat of Japanese spies was unfounded, made up. 120,000 people were ripped out of their communities for no reason. Farms, businesses, and homes were sold off and people were told to suspect their neighbors for no reason.
In the end, the Supreme Court took the military & intelligence at their word and went along with their demand for an exclusion zone and incarceration of all those of Japanese decent within it. Once the courts stop questioning the other branches of government, in this case Congress and the President, the balance that keeps dictators and tyrants in check was lost.
While the current Chief Justice Roberts has said Korematsu v United States‘has no place in law under the Constitution’ the law used to send Japanese to the camps was never overturned. The Supreme Court has not reversed its original decision so the law that gives the president power to round up people based on race in times of national security is still on the books. As the dissenting justice in the original ruling writes, such a flawed law “lies about like a loaded weapon.”
A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. Even during that period, a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.
